


two heads are better

by Darkfromday



Series: The Last Kings of Lucis [5]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Gen, also starring Somnus' Infinite Guilt About Ruining Everything, and introducing the beginning of Ardyn's eternal angst, resurrecting 'Izunia Lucis Caelum' into the FFXV fandom as Not-Somnus, with guest appearances from The Worst Astral of the Six
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:34:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24878551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkfromday/pseuds/Darkfromday
Summary: 73-year-old Ardyn closes his eyes in chains, and opens his eyes to a new world.
Relationships: Ardyn Izunia & Izunia Lucis Caelum, Ardyn Izunia & Somnus Lucis Caelum, Past Aera Mirus Fleuret/Ardyn Izunia
Series: The Last Kings of Lucis [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1317617
Comments: 12
Kudos: 29





	1. the end

**Author's Note:**

> Writer's block during a global pandemic _sucks_ , y'all. Especially when you finally _do_ write something, accidentally forget about it, realize AO3 deleted it, and _then_ have to write it _again_. From scratch.
> 
> Hope y'all are keeping well.

The silence of this tomb is complete; the darkness is absolute, swallowing whole all life and hope. Pain is muted here. For a long time, he likens it to his own personal Beyond: the light of Life is long gone, leaving only the paradise of feeling nearly nothing.

But thunder rumbles through this solitary pit and its solitary occupant, disguised as a voice.

**Adagium.**

Nothing answers. Nothing and no one.

**Adagium.**

There is no _need_ to answer. He has suffered enough, following the whims of voices that rattled the bones and heated the blood; and all for naught. Now is the time for nothingness. Now is the time for rest.

But the thunder insists.

**Adagium, wake.**

_Wake_? What madness is this? Wake, and be subjected to more agony? Wake, and find what other creative methods have been found for torture?

No.

_Leave me be._

**No, Adagium. You are not meant for this.**

_Meant for? You **took** from me all I was meant for._

**Your duty is unfinished. Your role carries on. Rise, and _take your place_.**

_NO!_

_How dare they ask anything more of_ —how _dare_ He mock the torment visited on one of His most devoted? For it was the whim of the Gods that he was run through with steel upon steel, strung up in chains, had skin and bone sliced away, and set afire—their desire that he be brought to the cusp of Death over and over again with no release! Their fault that his dreams are dark with the stench of blistering flesh and the phantom pain of missing limbs grown back by abominable profane _dirty_ **_wrong_** magic—the arcane at its worst. The arcane at his bidding.

Their fault, and His fault most of all.

**This is not what was foretold for you.**

_**BE SILENT** **!**_ The words boom from a well of deeper and more desperate darkness than the ones which came before. The void writhes because it caught a glimpse of Light—unwanted, unasked for, but penetrating down to his resting place all the same. More memories come with it: black bile streaming from his eyes and nose and ears, arrows in his flesh, blood soaking the ground. The screams of the innocent. For the first time in some time, he feels loathing; it twines quickly with despair.

_Leave me here. I wish to die. I was clearly **meant** to die; so leave me to it. It surely shouldn't be much longer..._

For a time there is nothing—no sound, no fury, no agony pushing to reach him—and he tastes the hope of solitude again.

Then more thunder rattles the stillness. **To perish unknown and unchallenged in the Dark is not the Usurper's fate.**

Madness. There is no place for him out there. Everything he was meant to become by will and birthright was denied; everything he had earned by living and loving well was stolen; everyone he relied on to bolster him where he was weak cut him down.

_There is no place for me but here._

If he is truly a deathless monster, imprisonment in chains is perfect atonement.

**Adagium. Wake. Return. Your fate cannot be denied.**

_Fate?_

A new feeling permeates the blackness—familiar but strange, tainted after so long. It is _amusement_. Those words... are _funny_.

The darkness—the void—the one called Adagium laughs, and the pinprick of Light recedes as he sinks further into the shadows that keep him safe.

 _I am no longer bound by Fate... Draconian_.


	2. the nephew

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I guess 2020 is just 'The Year of OCs' for me. Sorry, y'all. Hope you like him~!
> 
> A bit of bad Latin ahead. Hover for translations.

The voices don't stop calling for him. But they _do_ start using his proper name.

_**Ardyn.** _

But there _is_ a different sound to this summons.

_...cle Ardyn._

It is singular. It holds no undertone of the divine.

_Un... Ardyn._

The expectation in it is _different_.

"Uncle Ardyn!"

Something about this voice cuts through the blackness around him—clears the sludge clogging his throat, wipes away the miasma cloaking his sight. It tugs at him, coaxing him awake and aware—he resists, of _course_ he resists, but he is used to fighting against disdain, anger, entitlement, and malice. All of these feelings are absent from the sound calling him now.

This sound floats on the air, earnest and hopeful. It sounds more human.

It sounds like _Somnus_.

His eyes snap open; his mouth snags on a guttural snarl.

And—

Light nearly blinds him, first of all. He's not chained up in cold darkness any longer: no, now he is in a large room with gray walls and fine-but-unfamiliar furniture. He is lying in a bed— _not tied down_ —a wondrous bed, soft and supportive. It is merciful on his aching limbs—which, inexplicably, are not aching as much as he's used to. The only thing stoking his ire is the source of his near-blinding, a noticeable gap in the bluish-gray curtains adorning the windows: they are letting in an _unforgivable_ amount of sunlight.

That light is keeping him from seeing Somnus. He wants it _gone_. He wants _Somnus_ gone, and after eternity in the dark _he will see it done_.

"Uncle, be still! Your healing is still slow."

Loathing has given him back his identity. He is Ardyn Lucis Caelum and he is going to rend his brother in two for consigning him to that pit. A cloud of purple miasma envelops the room, smothering the light, blocking the door—eager to do his bidding.

His voice holds no sludge, but it's still rough, ragged with disuse. " _Ego copia micis tuum cadaver, Somnus_ —"

" _What_...? Uncle, _please_ calm down—look at me. There is no need to kill anyone! I swear, no one will harm you here."

How easy for him to hold up his hands for harmony _now_ , when they are alone, with no witnesses he must convince of Ardyn's abrupt and senseless treachery! How absolutely _banal_. Now that there is a chance for a fair fight, Somnus wields no weapon openly. Now that Ardyn is ready to make war, Somnus babbles incomprehensible words, likely weak bleats for _quiet_ and _peace_.

_NO._

Ardyn will not be fooled. The light has been reduced to a manageable level, and he works on adrenaline and incandescent rage alone to lift himself up and turn with a snarl to face—

to _kill_ —

...

a boy.

A crowned boy with Somnus' face.

He reels back, back, back, until his own tortured back hits softness. Pillows, at least four or five. The purple miasma hovers harmlessly around the two of them.

_What is this?_

The young face before him is the spitting image of Somnus as a child, and it also isn't. The hair is shorter, still dark, but barely clearing the nape of the boy's neck. The face is paler, _much_ paler, not nearly as sun-kissed. The lines of his cheeks are softer, where Somnus had sharp cheekbones. The eyes are the same shape but are a lighter blue, like clouds seen through mist, rather than the endless dark blue Ardyn remembers—dreams of—vividly. They are moist at the corners, actually, whether from agitation or from the thick violet smoke cloaking the room, affecting only one of its inhabitants.

There is still a crown atop this boy's head, a modest golden circlet, but everything else is _wrong_.

_Who is this?_

It cannot be Somnus. Even if the gods had somehow turned Time backward on him, undid the Past without undoing Ardyn's suffering and grief, there are too many minuscule differences between the boy Somnus and the boy stranger for them to be one and the same. And yet... he is familiar, _so familiar_. In Ardyn's haze of hatred, he had sounded exactly like Somnus.

Yet there is no familiarity for Ardyn in his eyes.

 _"Quis es?"_ he asks. No—he _demands_. He is a _King_. What he wants, he receives.

"Ah..." the boy breathes, looking unsettled. A step down from the fear that had openly infested his eyes a moment before, in the midst of Ardyn's lunge, but not far off from it. "Of course... it has been so long since you spoke the common tongue. And of course you would not know me."

His words are gibberish. True, the tones sound vaguely familiar and nonthreatening, but the words are still nonsense to Ardyn's ears. He frowns, and it darkens his entire face. How long was he locked away, that the words of other mortal creatures mean nothing? Has language been forever lost to him?

_ "Loqui!" _

The boy's hands are out now, palms up, in a gesture of supplication. _"Manere, manere,"_ he suddenly says, in a language Ardyn can ( _at last!_ ) understand. A plea to halt and listen in the tongue of the gods. His pronunciation is _atrocious_... but acceptable.

The thick miasma and darkness sleeping under Ardyn's skin and around the room seems to be completely at his disposal, ready to move at his will, even when his body fails. Though he doesn't loose it yet, he keeps it close and at the ready, like a dog trained to be vicious. He decides to call the crowned boy Not-Quite-Somnus in his mind. Or perhaps simply Not-Somnus.

Not-Somnus keeps his hands where Ardyn can see them as he fishes in a drawer sitting near the spacious bed. Out comes a roll of parchment (blank) and a quill (inked and ready). He lays the items flat on the bedcovers between himself and Ardyn, and pauses a moment to let Ardyn run one careful hand over both. And then he nods encouragingly when Ardyn's spindly fingers close around the quill first, to mark the parchment with shaky words in their shared tongue.

_'Who are you, and where am I?'_

Not-Somnus reads so slowly that Ardyn can follow his eyes as they trail across the line. When he's done he straightens up and faces Ardyn head-on with steady eyes. It makes him look worthy of the crown on his head for the first time.

"This may come as a bit of a shock," he begins, (blessedly) still in the correct tongue, "but you are home, ah, _sire_. You currently reside in the Kingdom of Lucis."

_Impossible._

Ardyn denies the words outright. He shakes his head; his breathing turns hard and choppy in his chest and his eyes narrow to slits; the oppressive darkness in the room creeps closer to the two of them in the center. This cannot be the Lucis he was born to inherit, it _cannot_. It is too bright, too fine, too _different_. Theirs is a fledgling kingdom, bound together by little but name and contracts, and even its highest-ranking citizens occasionally suffer straw beds and simple stone tables for their conferences. The room he is in alone has enough finery to buy many of Ardyn's prior abodes outright, and still have crowns to spare.

_ "Non, non." _

_"Ita vereor,"_ Not-Somnus affirms. "This is your home, Uncle. Though... it has changed some since last you beheld it."

Without rage to shackle his reason this time, Ardyn hears the (un)familiar term lodged in between the other words and pauses at it. _Patruus. Patruus?_ But that means _uncle_. He _is_ this boy's senior, his superior, so perhaps he is only being polite? But why not use _dominus_ as any properly trained Lucian would...?

Unless his theory is correct, and this is not Lucis at all.

But then this crowned whelp would be deceiving him. Lying to him. Tricking a favored child of the Gods after pulling him from a small eternity trapped in the dark and the cold by his own blood... who would be mad enough to commit such a crime?

_Somnus would._

But Somnus is not here. Only this stranger who looks more like his brother than Ardyn does.

And why _does_ this near-facsimile of Somnus wear a crown?

Ardyn takes up the quill again and underlines the first question sitting dry on the parchment. Underlines it again. _Answer me_ , he says— _demands_ —solely with his eyes. _Answer this_.

Not-Somnus hesitates.

_Answer this._

Ardyn makes the miasma hiss, since his own voice will not do the sound justice if he tries it. He writes an extra line too, underneath the question he most wants answered right this instant.

_'Why patruus?'_

"Because you are my uncle by blood," the boy says, slowly but surely. "As Somnus Lucis Caelum was once your brother, he was also once my father. I am Izunia Lucis Caelum, the only son and heir of His Majesty Somnus Lucis Caelum, the Mystic, First King of Lucis."

There really is only one proper reaction to such an outlandish claim.

_ "Ut ex." _

Not-Somnus rears back with wide eyes, but he does not get off of the bed. He does not leave. "Uncle," he says again. "I speak only the truth."

_ "Exite!" _

"Uncle, please. You are... confused—angry—I cannot leave you here alone! There is so much to explain... so much for me to apologize for."

The words feel like venom, uttered by a tongue in a face so similar to the man he loathes. _Explain?_ **_Apologize_ _?_** Somnus never knew the meaning of the word. He forwent learning that lesson as a child, so that he might grow bigger and commit greater sins against family and country without the burden of remorse.

Ardyn snarls again and writes so hard with the quill that the parchment tears, and ink bleeds into the sheets covering his frail body. Painting the rest of him as black (as corrupt) as his mind and soul and magic.

_'Get out. GET OUT, I said!'_

" _Please_. There are things you must know, and the sooner the better, lest we be unprepared in the face of anger from the Gods."

Ardyn _roars_. His miasma _screams_.

_OUT OF MY SIGHT!! Daemon, stranger, face-sharer, oath-breaker, **traitor**. Out! **OUT**!!_

Too late, he realizes it was not only the ( _faceless, voiceless_ ) poison around him screaming. Nor were the words only the fractured thoughts of his splintered mind. His throat is beyond sore now, rubbed raw on the inside by the most intense hatred he has ever voiced in his thirty-and-some years.

Not-Somnus is white in the face now. White-faced and _compliant_. He slides slowly off the fine sheets, leaving the writing instruments where they are, and edges away from the darkness which has curled around Ardyn like a favored feline companion. He reaches his destination (that gray door) both quickly and not quickly enough.

"I will go," he whispers, and—to Ardyn's great surprise—bows his head in the manner befitting a subject to their King. "It was not my intent to upset you so. But I will return, Uncle Ardyn, and we will speak. There is much to be said, and much more that must be done."

 _That does it_. Ardyn fashions a violet spear out of the darkness and hefts it high as he can with his weak arm and weak aim. But Not-Somnus moves too quickly again, and is through the door and gone before Ardyn can make good on his threat.

He loses all his strength the moment a target is not in sight—he sags against the plump pillows and the soothing sheets, breathing hard against the new clog in his throat. It feels like blood. Perhaps it is.

 _Impossible_.

This cannot be Lucis. That boy—the boy who isn't Somnus—cannot be his son, because Somnus never _had_ a son. Ardyn used to tease him, in long ages past, about adjusting his face to a more positive mien lest he frighten away all the respectable women who might have him. But Somnus preferred burning villages and cutting down afflicted souls to finding a partner to share his life with. And Ardyn had not cared overmuch about his brother's solitary lifestyle the older they became, because Somnus had Gilgamesh Amicitia and he had—

_No._

The boy was lying. Yes, Somnus _did_ steal his crown—Ardyn is sure now that that look of distress on _her_ face came from hearing different words than those which Somnus uttered in the name of the Gods. Perhaps Somnus _had_ thrown Ardyn down into that pit and come back here to be King, but the rest of it could not be so. For though it was surely forever and ever since the light of the divine had touched Ardyn's life, it was surely not so long that his hated blood could have found a wife and borne a child.

Surely not.


	3. the dream

The next time sleep overpowers him, he dreams of Aera Mirus Fleuret for the first time in decades.

She is lying under a tree the way they sometimes used to, when together and blessed with leisure time. The tree is leafless though, the bark peeling away. Her face is turned toward the gray sky above, watching lightning dance between the clouds; her arms are tucked under her silky blonde hair, holding her head just above the grass... grass that is browning around her in a wide circle, dying with her at the epicenter.

Or perhaps _she_ is dying, and is leaching from the land around her to appear as Ardyn remembers her.

He has no body that he can feel—he is just a presence. He has no way to approach her, sit at her side, lay her head in his lap. And she does not move to acknowledge him in any way. All he can do in this dream is watch her, and wait, and wonder.

"Passivity does not suit me," she says to no one in particular.

_What?_

"Perhaps this is the punishment of the Gods. Payment for my interference. But allowing the world to fall into near-eternal darkness for the possibility of a later, brighter Light... seems to be its own darkness."

 _"Aera,"_ Ardyn tries to call. The name gets stuck in his throat, buzzing uselessly, unable to escape. It worries at him more than anything he's seeing, makes him struggle wildly against empty air; for if he is here, _looking_ at his fiancée, _hearing_ her, why then can he not _touch_ her or _speak_ to her? _What_ in the realm of dreams is keeping them apart?

"How many of my sister's daughters must suffer before this Scourge can be destroyed? How many of my intended's family must waste away before Providence waxes full?"

_Sister's daughters? Providence?_

"Only Death will eat Her fill in the end," Aera whispers. She lifts a hand up to the sky, drawing a pattern he does not recognize. Perhaps it's a spell for her staff?

_But her staff is not here. The dead do not need defending._

The invisible bonds around invisible Ardyn tighten when he flexes and tries to scream. Darkness sprouts from nothing, giving him form by flanking his edges. The stink of it is everywhere—it _must_ be, it is clogging his nose, burying everything else—but Aera does not react. Not to the smell, not to the sludge-like sounds, not to the 'sight' of her husband-to-be getting swallowed by the Starscourge's personification in the Between.

_"Aera!"_

"And yet, and yet. If Lord Bahamut were only to give me the chance to do it again... would I have stood aside and let Somnus cut down the other half of my soul?"

Ardyn goes still.

Something ugly and primal and evil _laughs_ in his head. Perhaps because it knows the answer is not one that will favor him.

 _Answer_ , he thinks. He pleads without sound, since his voice has no power here. _Say you would never forswear me. Say I am your guiding star, as you were mine. Promise me your heart—please, Aera._

Aera sits up. For the first time, he sees the whole of her—her long white dress is torn at the hip, marred by dirt, and it has slashes of crimson marring the fabric: a cruel god painting a morbid canvas. There is a telltale dark red spot at her abdomen that resembles a sword wound— _that_ sword wound. She turns and looks _through_ him with those arresting clear blue eyes. 

"Another chance," she begins, "so Ardyn may—"

The darkness decides Ardyn _may not_ hear the end. It tugs him down and down and down, and though he tries to push through it and know the answer that lies in his fiancée's breast—

—he wakes up instead.


End file.
